Do wit dem as you like, and may Gott haf mercy on you and on dem.

Garts, about face! Voryvarts, march!" With this he marched out and left us.
For a moment the condemned looked stunned.

They seemed to comprehend for the first time that it was really the determination of the Regulators to hang them.

Before that they had evidently thought that the talk of hanging was merely bluff.

One of them gasped out: "My God, men, you don't really mean to hang us up there!" Key answered grimly and laconically: "That seems to be about the size of it." At this they burst out in a passionate storm of intercessions and imprecations, which lasted for a minute or so, when it was stopped by one of them saying imperatively: "All of you stop now, and let the priest talk for us." At this the priest closed the book upon which he had kept his eyes bent since his entrance, and facing the multitude on the North Side began a plea for mercy.
The condemned faced in the same direction to read their fate in the countenances of those whom he was addressing.